Misinformation through the lens of the censorship industrial complex in New Zealand

How Covid misinformation in New Zealand has supported a wider censorship industrial complex led by government and contributing players.

The wider game at play that Covid misinformation exposes is what Matt Taibbi has labelled the censorship industrial complex. And that is in Racket News contributor, Andrew Lowenthal’s words a capture, ”…by corporate and government interests, and a broader shift towards anti-liberal and authoritarian solutions to online challenges.”

The wider mis/disinformation landscape

While the States had Trump being elected and January 6 as pivot points, New Zealand had the tragedy of the Christchurch terror attack. It lit a torch to online extremism.

This is a graphic of the players in this game that I cover here and in previous posts.

The outcome was the Christchurch Call, led partly by then Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern (who continues as a figurehead) - a consortium of private and public interests banding together. The Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT) were the key actor to jump in to stop the Buffalo attack in May 2022 being live streamed. GIFCT are involved in the Christchurch Call to map content-sharing algorithms and processes used by industry, which is a large part of the Christchurch Call outputs.

A Miscrosoft partnership, at a cost of $US1.5 million, will develop software based on this so that government - I mean researchers - will be able to “…remotely study data and algorithms distributed across multiple secure sites.” Yeah…go read it.

However work on these algorithms is difficult as an April 2022 briefing on it to the Prime Minister discussed:

Close to the policy line huh - grey zone huh. Seems familiar as this pretty much sums up what was Covid misinformation. Should I mention here that 1 of the co-leads on this work is the Institute of Strategic Dialogue - who have been a key consultant to the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) in the misinformation game.

The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPMC) are the central coordinators of the intelligence community through the National Security Group. Their Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism (PCVE) program, includes administering the Christchurch Call, which they’ve been specifically given in the 2023/24 budget $1.568 million to continue.

As part of that PCVE program, DPMC started to review and strengthen their own, and other government agency, capabilities.

DPMC developed New Zealand's Countering Terrorism and Violent Extremism Strategy. And then led He Whenua Taurikura Hui on countering terrorism and violent extremism for the last 2 years. The last hui featured a panel with Kate Hannah of the Disinformation Project, DIA and the Institute of Strategic Dialogue have also spoken at it.

The latest budget notes the importance of social cohesion and references surveys that show levels of trust differ between ethnic groups. Challenges in maintaining social cohesion, such as disinformation, are explicitly called out. The example provided is violent misogyny as a risk factor for radicalisation - which leads to violent extremism and terrorism. It ends, “Initiatives funded under the Christchurch Call can reduce online and offline violence and violent rhetoric.”

After reading that, it felt eerie to hear Tucker Carlson in his 2nd Twitter show, calling out the recent commencement speech by President Biden at Howard University. Biden said white supremacy is the most dangerous terrorist threat the States is facing.

Tucker asked where is all this white supremacy and who is doing it? Have you heard? Cos he doesn’t see it. And I’m starting to think the same at the bottom of the world - where is all this extremist, violent misogyny within society that the budget is calling out as a reason for funding online initiatives to combat it?

I couldn’t find explicit reports on threats from violent misogyny within New Zealand from NZSIS who look into extremism. There was a 2021 report on incels which could be close, but NZSIS refused to release it. What I can only assume to be the most similar topic they listed - White Identity Motivated Violent Extremism - NZSIS released only a summary which found “…in New Zealand [it] is highly individualistic, and there is no indication of an organised W-IMVE group in New Zealand.”

Because if extremism is the threat, the force behind the dangers, the reason to regulate content and control mis/disinformation - it must be a frightening landscape.

But is it?

What did government agencies who investigated Covid extremism find?

The Christchurch Call was explicitly created in response to online extremism and government thought Covid misinformation was a driver to what they labelled as extremism:

I found multiple examples of government agencies that pumped out reports on extremism and Covid. A summary:

DIA have refused to release, Dominant Covid-19 Narratives Among New Zealand Extremists and Conspiracy Theorists.

NZSIS has refused to release various reports they’ve done such as, Violent Extremist Threats to the Covid-19 Mitigation Program and on Covid protests. Although I can’t help but mention they did a report titled, Threat Implications from NZ Cricket Cancellation! Yikes - cricket fans are now sewer rats?

Police have refused to release these 3 Covid reports, Social Discord and Its Long-Term Implications, Strategic Assessment – Implications of COVID-19 for Police over summer 2021- 2022 and lastly, Scanning Report Protest Activity.

DPMC sulked but did eventually release the 2021, Strengthening New Zealand’s resilience to mis/disinformation strategic framework but have repeatedly refused to release their 2022 briefing to the Prime Minister titled Policy Levers for Addressing Mis/disinformation (only the appendix has been deemed releasable).

I did find the NZSIS response to New Zealand Herald journalist David Fisher, trying his hardest to be confused with a government shill, potentially apt.

They gave him a written statement to his insipid requests on Covid extremism, noting issues with freedom of speech, and that even if someone says something judged extremist online - it does not follow that they would have any intent to carry out violent acts.

So while I don’t know what most of those reports say as they have not been released, from combing through other documents, including wider than Covid, I suspect: they have not much. Look at the latest available DIA annual report from their Countering Digital Extremism team, formed in the aftermath of the Christchurch attack. The report almost exclusively talks about the Buffalo shooting and not much else.

But looking at this against a wider landscape - shows the machine at play.

How Covid misinformation amplified the censorship landscape

Netsafe supported government during Covid by doing misinformation reporting to platforms on their behalf. They’ve also been amplifying the threat of misinformation and developed a voluntary code of conduct with big tech players. This new and voluntary Code has agreements to stop mis/disinformation and lists what each platform is doing to combat it. The code was signed by Meta, Twitter, Tik Tok, Twitch and Google.

Due to the self regulatory nature of the Code, not for profit Toatoha in April 2023, launched their own petition titled Fix the Code.

Toatoha was created to implement and advocate for Creative Commons licensing in New Zealand - and somehow decided during Covid to grasp a new concern - mis/disinformation.

Toahata joined forces with SMAT (Social Media Analysis Toolkit), who submitted to Parliament on “malicious actors” within New Zealand based on their analysis which showed a rise in white supremacy and extremist content in 2020. Much like the Disinformation Project they contort themselves with hyperbole. They researched how many times the word ‘NZ’ appears on Gab and Telegram. Scary! I mean they even went so far as to call out:

Uh - that’s exactly what was happening. There’s multiple examples from the Twitter files and even former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson’s lawsuit that showed Twitter kicked him off due to Biden White House interference. Head of Meta, Mark Zuckerburg even discussed this a few days ago in a podcast with Lex Friedman where he admits Facebook censored Covid information that ended up being true - and he reflected on how that undermines trust.

Policing mis/disinformation is a grey zone that doesn’t stack up - if it leads to explicit and actionable extremism, that is not clear in these documents. And if policing mis/disinformation leads to an undermining of trust, threatening the democratic institutions and ways of life that is sought to be protected by censoring mis/disinformation - then what is the point of doing it exactly?

Toatoha is in partnership with a larger not for profit, InternetNZ - the appointed ‘guardian’ of the .nz domain through a MoU with MBIE. Who have also…you can guess by now…produced their own reports on platforms and misinformation, and provided funding to other initiatives on misinformation. As well as DIA proposing content regulation, InternetNZ relied on the Disinformation Project hyperbole to support their campaign to review content regulation in New Zealand, and funded Brainbox to work on content regulation and disinformation in New Zealand. Brainbox have also done a report for DPMC. InternetNZ also used their platform and paid to produce a mis/disinformation report from Humanity Matters too.

And InternetNZ is looking ahead to the upcoming national election.

In 2021 a small group of researcher activists, Stephen Judd and Anke Richter among others, launched Fight Against Conspiracy Theories - FACT Aotearoa. Largely dedicated to combating any voices or information (lab leak theories, alternative Covid policies) they saw as problematic - which coincidentally dovetailed exactly with whatever government said. They scored some mainstream media time, like the Disinformation Project, for their hyperbole. But they primarily supported journalists to report on people - again most notably anyone connected with critics of vaccine mandates or government Covid policy, who ran for local body elections in 2022.

In May 2023, FACT Aotearoa announced receiving funding from InternetNZ to continue this work for the national election.

Covid has ignited & pushed these efforts

Whatever was against a government pronouncement on Covid - was banned. And the shadow interests within and outside of central government supported it. Whether they were multi-national consultancy companies, or trying to get a rung on the ladder, or just a person trying to keep their job - the government machinery is quietly maintained regardless of what that machinery means.

The fight against misinformation on Covid and the vaccine was because a 1 size fits all approach was consciously taken, even government subject matter experts, repeatedly had advice not followed. Nuance got in the way.

When I look at the Disinformation Project - I see academics with overblown rhetoric that goes unchallenged. But although critics of attempts to quash free speech like to focus on the Disinformation Project - they are inconsequential, a sideshow, the magician’s hand to the right deflecting the audience’s attention while the trick is happening on the left.

And the trick is this wider landscape. The players piling on board as enthusiastic, self-interested, cogs as part of this wider machine - what Taibbi and his contributors on Racket News have labelled the censorship industrial complex.

Misinformation is the calling card, hazy and unbalanced at best, erroneously apocalyptic at worst, of people who take on the machinery and without reflection drive it further.

And they do this because they have defined what they believe they have the will and power to define on behalf of others - the very nature of reality itself.

End of post bonus:
The full picture of the mis/disinformation efforts around Covid are in this collection of posts.